Getting kids on the right track with early science education

A review in Science discusses what we know about teaching young kids science, …

Here at Ars, we often discuss the problems with science education, many of which involve higher education. However, the earliest science education begins long before students reach college, or even high school. A review in the most recent issue of Science tackles some of the issues involved in teaching our littlest scientists about how the world works.

What influences how children learn about science?

Right off the bat, it’s clear that there just isn’t enough time spent on science during early education. In a study of Midwestern preschools, less than five percent of classroom time was devoted to any type of scientific activities. Preschool age may sound too early to start learning about science, but research has shown that preschoolers are intellectually and developmentally ready to understand basic scientific concepts. They are very good at interpreting patterns, and can even distinguish conclusive from inconclusive evidence.

In fact, very young children are advanced enough to already have some ideas about the way the world works. Some of these ideas are inevitably wrong, and part of teachers' jobs must be to correct these misunderstandings. For instance, most children in elementary school have incorrect beliefs about gravity and the movement of the solar system. Early education must ditch the classic concept of children as "blank slates," and work to identify and correct areas of confusion.

Beyond what children already know (or think they know), researchers have identified a few other factors that affect the development of scientific thinking. First of all, the subject matter often dictates students' success in the classroom. For example, fifth-graders are much better at understanding physical concepts than they are at grasping social reasoning. Additionally, the goal matters; students are more successful at completing tasks where they have to identify a cause, rather than produce a particular outcome.

There’s more than one way to teach science

Because the scientific process is so complicated, there are myriad approaches to teaching science. For instance, once the teacher raises a question (which item will hit the ground first if I drop them at the same time?), there are lots of ways to answer it. Do the students handle the materials and make their own predictions? Who develops the experiment, the teacher or the students? Does the teacher explain the outcome, or do the students try to figure out what happened? Is there any experiment at all, or is the concept simply explained to the students?

Three major types of instruction are most common: the "direct" method, the "Socratic" method, and the "discovery" method. The direct method is the most traditional—the teacher explains an experiment and its outcome, but the experiment is not actually conducted in the classroom. In Socratic instruction, the students devise and carry out an experiment with help and guidance from the teacher, and attempt to explain the outcome. Finally, discovery learning is the most independent; students devise, execute, and interpret their own experiments, often with no input from the teacher at all.

The curiosity conundrum

So, which method works the best for these young children? Some studies show that direct instruction—the most teacher-centric form—is the quickest and most effective way to help students learn. Moreover, students who received direct instruction were better at remembering and transferring what they’d learned than students taught by Socratic or discovery learning, even after several years.

While this may sound decisive, the best approach isn't simple and clean-cut. When dealing with young, malleable minds, you’re not necessarily looking for perfect memorization of concepts or fastidious completion of experiments. Instead, the main goal is to instill a sense of curiosity into students. But, unlike more concrete goals, there is no good way to measure curiosity. In order to get a good handle on the overall effectiveness of various teaching methods, "curiosity" must be well-defined and quantifiable. As of now, there is little agreement on the matter.

It’s likely that the direct method of instruction is successful in teaching facts and concepts, thus it appears to be the most "effective" way to teach children science. However, once a consensus is reached on the best way to measure curiosity, researchers may recognize that the student-centered methods are better at nurturing young scientists' curiosity about the world.

Working toward a better system

Clearly, there isn’t one right method to teaching science, and neither researchers nor educators have a handle right now on what works best. What is clear is that children’s cognitive development and their current understanding of the world around them must be taken into account. Additionally, we need better ways to measure how successful various methods are in cultivating their natural curiosity. If we want a forward-thinking, scientifically minded population in the future, preschool is the place to start.

Kate Shaw Yoshida
Kate is a science writer for Ars Technica. She recently earned a dual Ph.D. in Zoology and Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior from Michigan State University, studying the social behavior of wild spotted hyenas. Emailkate.shaw@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KateYoshida

I would be skeptical that there is any real evidence that these studies have any value at all. There is no history of science aptitude tests that I know of. People who become serious scientists generally learn at least to some degree how to do science in graduate school. Even then doing science is not explicitly taught. Even the most successful scientists don't really know how to explicitly teach anything except some subject matter curriculum. In the good outcomes, like any apprentices, graduate students learn from them just by being around them and watching what they do. I probably picked up more from eating lunch with a group of students and faculty that included a couple of Nobel prize winners than I did from any explicit instruction. It is reasonably clear that there is such a thing as both math aptitude and math skills. Some kinds of science are heavily dependent on math talent and also a major effort at acquiring math skills. Nobody that I ever saw had much success at theoretical physics or advanced electrical engineering without both exceptional math talent and the willingness to spend a long time developing math skills. On the other hand neither of my peers who made it to full professor in biological science at top five American scientific institutions is specially good at math. Software engineering on the other hand requires math talent but not much in the way of math skills. It is not uncommon for people to do well in software engineering who have had problems fitting into standard educational environments. In my own case, I can't remember any of my elementary school teachers adding any value in science education. When I started high school the curriculum still started out with a year of general science. In the eyes of the teacher, I was doing so poorly in the accelerated class that she recommended to move me to the regular class for the second semester. However, at the same time the concept was introduced of using a test to select students who could skip general science and go right into biology. Since I earned the highest score in the school on the test, I was moved into double accelerated biology instead of regular track general science. Who taught me that science? I doubt it was any of my teachers.

Out of all the science classes that I've ever taken, I'd say that the most influential for me was "Earth Science" which was basically in intro to almost any type of science you can think of. We changed topics every few weeks (maybe a month or so on a few) and covered everything from geology, astronomy, chemistry, kinematics, optics, waves, atoms/nuclear physics, biology & botany, meteorology, and probably one or two that I can't remember right now. Obviously I didn't learn everything about each subject, but it was enough of an intro that when I took chemistry, bioology, and physics the next couple of years, most of the entire first quarter was pretty much all review (and subsequently an easy A). I think what helped us the most was that there were lots of small experiments. They weren't dull like lots of the ones I've had to do years later in school, but were open ended enough that you had to come up with your own procedure to get the data you needed. Doing that rather than just following a page of directions really helped us think through what was actually going on and how we can modify it.

I would be skeptical that there is any real evidence that these studies have any value at all. There is no history of science aptitude tests that I know of. People who become serious scientists generally learn at least to some degree how to do science in graduate school. Even then doing science is not explicitly taught. Even the most successful scientists don't really know how to explicitly teach anything except some subject matter curriculum. In the good outcomes, like any apprentices, graduate students learn from them just by being around them and watching what they do. I probably picked up more from eating lunch with a group of students and faculty that included a couple of Nobel prize winners than I did from any explicit instruction. It is reasonably clear that there is such a thing as both math aptitude and math skills. Some kinds of science are heavily dependent on math talent and also a major effort at acquiring math skills. Nobody that I ever saw had much success at theoretical physics or advanced electrical engineering without both exceptional math talent and the willingness to spend a long time developing math skills. On the other hand neither of my peers who made it to full professor in biological science at top five American scientific institutions is specially good at math. Software engineering on the other hand requires math talent but not much in the way of math skills. It is not uncommon for people to do well in software engineering who have had problems fitting into standard educational environments. In my own case, I can't remember any of my elementary school teachers adding any value in science education. When I started high school the curriculum still started out with a year of general science. In the eyes of the teacher, I was doing so poorly in the accelerated class that she recommended to move me to the regular class for the second semester. However, at the same time the concept was introduced of using a test to select students who could skip general science and go right into biology. Since I earned the highest score in the school on the test, I was moved into double accelerated biology instead of regular track general science. Who taught me that science? I doubt it was any of my teachers.

I can wholeheartedly attest to this, at least on the scientific front. Class work is important, especially for more theoretical work, but way too much emphasis is placed on it. Class work uses selected small examples of well-understood concepts that have intrinsic pedagogical value. Real research does not consist of small examples, is by definition never well-understood, and the problems almost never has intrinsic pedagogical value. It is far, far more important to have a good advisor that is willing to suffer all your screwups (because you will be making a metric shitload of screwups) than to have A's in a wide array of classes. It's important to attend as many colloquium as possible at your university. To read select papers that aren't explicitly on your work but are in the general field just to keep up with your general knowledge. To socialize with fellow scientists over beers (the slight inebriation is important imho, it loosens people up so they're not keeping questions to themselves in an attempt to avoid sounding stupid). This is how you learn to do science: by watching your advisor correct you on your 9784th mistake this year, by watching researchers present their findings in such a way that some subject you were hazy on in course work and never truly learned suddenly *clicks* in your mind, and by randomly making moronic-yet-teachable mistakes in front of your fellow grad students. NONE of this has anything to do with standard scientific education, science fairs, or that bullshit lie known as "the scientific method".

What seems to be missing from the article is the role of parents or other outsiders in fostering early education. (And I don't intend to open the 'home-schooling' can of worms here.) I was fortunate to have science and engineering emphasis from mine and thus learned quite a lot outside of class. But schools, particularly public, don't have the luxury of tailoring curricula to accommodate the wide range of experience gained outside of school itself.

Beyond that, it's a virtuous or vicious cycle depending on the kid's environment; education-oriented households tend to promote more of the same, while those that don't seem to fall further behind with each generation.

Perhaps some work is needed on a curriculum. Teachers can help the kids grow taller. They can work at teaching them abstinence. They can try to spot anybody who sexuality is not quite on the right track and try to straighten them out. The teachers might actually have more success at these endeavors than creating scientists because in most cases the teachers probably have a better understanding of the issues involved than they do about what science is. Even the two Nobel prize winners that I knew some when I was a graduate student only had a pretty limited idea of what science is.

For those of us who are responsible for shaping young still forming minds... any suggestions to good resources to do with your kids in the home?

"Ars suggests weekend science!" or something like that?

Fun experiments for 3 to 4, 5 to 7, 8 to 10 year olds, etc...??

The Dangerous Book for Boys has a lot of simple projects in it like making paper airplanes and tying knots. I think there are several competitors now as well. Popular Science has a series of books The Boy Magician, The Boy Mechanic, The Boy Camper, etc. which are re-publications of books from the fifties.

Lego Mindstorms is a good introduction to robotics and Lego Technics is a good introduction to gears and levers. There are a lot of books about Legos that can help extract lessons from them rather than just playing, though that's fun too. I like the Lego Technic Idea Books for their simple explanations of machines. The books are almost wordless and have ideas rather than complete models so they encourage exprerimentation.

Make magazine and the books they publish are good introductions to electronics and their open source Arudino hardware can do some pretty impressive stuff.

I also like Theo Gray's Mad Science although some of the experiments in it actually do get a bit dangerous.

And don't forget about local museums. Science museums are awesome for kids and can give you a lot of ideas for projects and often have group projects. Museums about aircraft, boats, cars, industry, state history, etc. can all be interesting. And, even going to factory tours can impart some science lessons.

"Clearly, there isn’t one right method to teaching science, and neither researchers nor educators have a handle right now on what works best."

If we don't know what works then we should allow and encourage more innovation and variety at the state and local levels. The more different things are tried (experimentation), the quicker we can discover and adopt the best methods. Instead what we've been doing is handing more control to bureaucrats and politicians, forcing everybody to try the same thing, while spending more and more time filling out paperwork to prove their compliance.

If we don't know what works then we should allow and encourage more innovation and variety at the state and local levels. The more different things are tried (experimentation), the quicker we can discover and adopt the best methods.

Be careful - that can cut both ways. Some local people might see it as a license to impose their pet agenda on the community.

I'm not disagreeing in principle, but I think there should still be some sort of checks and balances in place, whatever they might be.

1st Place: "My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)"Cassidy Turnbull (grade 5) presented her uncle, Steve. She also showed photographs of monkeys and invited fairgoers to note the differences between her uncle and the monkeys. She tried to feed her uncle bananas, but he declined to eat them. Cassidy has conclusively shown that her uncle is no monkey.

I couldn't agree more with some of the claims presented in this article.

I'm currently a Senior in high school, and I wasn't by any means challenged in a science class until I took Honors Chemistry Sophomore year. For the entire time I was in elementary and later middle school, "science class" was just a boring 30-45 minute block of time that was either spent regurgitating miscellaneous facts from a textbook, watching a video, or doing a hands-off demo.

Regardless of what the cause of this situation is, it is unacceptable. Most elementary and middle school students get hardly any homework, so I see no problem in making the school day a bit longer to study science, or perhaps begin to do some hands-on labs in a laboratory environment.

Regardless of what a person ends up doing as a career, a solid education in basic scientific information is indespensible. People need to understand why it's dangerous to mix bleach and vinegar; people need to understand why tanning is unhealthy for the skin; people have to understand why a house with a dirt cheap foundation will not stand.

Science is not something done in a laboratory "over there" it applies to everyone, everywhere, everyday. A proper understanding and education in some of its basic principles can greatly improve an average persons ability to make wise and informed decisions.

There is only one catch though -- young minds have to be taught to cherish and apply there scientific knowledge. It all starts in preschool.

Why should we let some peoples' fact-free, sectarian hangups erode the quality of science education for everyone else?

If the quality suffers for a lack of wealth transfer, then good. I wouldn't steal your money to fund Voodoo. You should have just the same respect for what others accept as facts.

Voodoo doesn't immunize children against deadly diseases. Voodoo doesn't tell us what metals to use in making machines that run calculations billions of times per second. Voodoo doesn't generate electrical power for six continents, or turn sunlight into power for a constellation of satellites linking them up for instant communication around the world, reliable navigation to a new city, or monitoring the path of hurricanes. Voodoo doesn't let us see what happens to your lungs after years of smoking, or let you witness in living color the development of a living fetus in the womb. Voodoo never told us that Jupiter had any moons, and Voodoo never sent remote cameras there to show us the ice-covered face of one such tiny world called Europa. Voodoo tells us nothing about why things fall to the ground or how to find distinct chemical elements that were previously unknown.

Science works, demonstrably. This is irrespective of what other people believe about it. Physics, biology, chemistry... they don't care what your religion is. They work regardless. Some people think the findings of science are wrong when it conflicts with their religious traditions, but those findings continue to serve society for the better. These things that work without reliance on supernatural beliefs are what we should be teaching children through the state, and it's what we should all pay into as part of the social contract because when science education suffers, it ruins society for everybody. If you view funding of basic science education as theft, feel free to leave the country and find one that doesn't levy taxes or educate its people.

Science is not something done in a laboratory "over there" it applies to everyone, everywhere, everyday. A proper understanding and education in some of its basic principles can greatly improve an average persons ability to make wise and informed decisions.

There is only one catch though -- young minds have to be taught to cherish and apply there scientific knowledge. It all starts in preschool.

I have to say that you're a lot more insightful than most people your age.

I heartily agree that interest in science is best nurtured at an early age. But the same applies to an interest in math, language, music, and many other fields. Some parents go overboard and try to raise a Wonder Child, often neglecting to allow them to be kids rather than shaping them into round-the-clock knowledge sponges. Getting the balance right is also part of the equation.

But every child should at least have the opportunity to challenge themselves intellectually to find out where their interests might develop. Sadly that doesn't happen in a lot of households.

Why should we let some peoples' fact-free, sectarian hangups erode the quality of science education for everyone else?

If the quality suffers for a lack of wealth transfer, then good. I wouldn't steal your money to fund Voodoo. You should have just the same respect for what others accept as facts.

Rubbish. If you believe that then you could logically believe children should not be taught anything because you are potentially pushing a world view on them using education partially funded by at least one individual that disagrees. I remember having beliefs as a child, and I remember having many of them dispelled by education which I am grateful for.

Education is an essential part of bringing up our young to be effective members of our species. It happened before schools existed, and it will and should continue to happen into the indefinite future. That some of that education is related to teaching kids about how the world works (gravity etc.) is a good thing, and it'd probably better if we spent more time on it.

Or perhaps it would be best if kids stuck knives in toasters because they don't know any better?

I worried for a moment it was for real. Perhaps more worrying is that I even thought it COULD be real...

Perhaps it says more about you than the site content, that you could think that drivel was real. The truth? I'm very much a Christian, and I could tell damn near instantly that the site is a parody. The tip off might have been the "Pokemon Prove Evolutionism Is False" bit, but it could have been anything.

The fact that anybody could possibly believe that this is even remotely representative of Christianity is just ridiculous.

dlux wrote:

chimly wrote:

Then use your money. Why should others fund what they disagree with?

Is that a tea bag slapping you on the forehead?

Will this question apply to anyone who has a problem with the 9/11 memorial including a cross?

<snip> Perhaps it says more about you than the site content, that you could think that drivel was real. The truth? I'm very much a Christian, and I could tell damn near instantly that the site is a parody. The tip off might have been the "Pokemon Prove Evolutionism Is False" bit, but it could have been anything.

The fact that anybody could possibly believe that this is even remotely representative of Christianity is just ridiculous.

*scratch* I grew up with that kinda stuff as ... fact so, umm, BinaryGod is not that ridiculous. My brother proposed that we can prove evolution false by feeding cats through their ears. At the time I thought it was logical. He was in charge of a 20+ team of Children's Church teachers.

There are people running around disparaging Harry Potter as indicative of demons blinding the 'world' to the 'truth of the Lord Jesus'.

*scratch* I grew up with that kinda stuff as ... fact so, umm, BinaryGod is not that ridiculous. My brother proposed that we can prove evolution false by feeding cats through their ears. At the time I thought it was logical. He was in charge of a 20+ team of Children's Church teachers.

There are people running around disparaging Harry Potter as indicative of demons blinding the 'world' to the 'truth of the Lord Jesus'.

In the event that your brother still believes that, you should tell him to put his money where his mouth (ear?) is. If a set of claws a quarter inch through his flesh doesn't bring him around then he's just plain stupid. Stupidity isn't exclusive to religion, nor is it particularly corollary to the same.